77 karma · joined October 12, 2019
> Of course nations are competitors. International trade is an unregulated market, every nation competes economically with each other and tries to extract maximally favorable deal for themselves; when negotiations get heated, they get backed up by military strength, and the only reason we don't go to war often is a combination of sanity and MADness.
What does this have to do with post-WWII economic recovery in the U.S.?
> These are not mutually exclusive. See China v USA right now.
Well, taken out of context of the discussion, you can say lots of things.
> the reason the US was ably to basically jump start it's economy after ww2 was mainly because all of its competitors got either got their industries and cities literally leveled, or their nation/people nearly utterly destroyed.
> Even the UK, which was a victor of world war 2 had an economy which was basically dead in the water until the late 70's.
> The US got incredibly "lucky" during world war 2 in the sense that it didn't fight the conflict on its own continent.
> Also, the marshall plan was a smart policy in an economic sense because it allowed the war economy to transistion back into civilian goods thanks to having a massive (subsidized) export market.
Nations are not competitors. They are trade partners.
The Marshall Plan was passed in 1948.
> Yes, there is irresponsible lending that winds up in temporary value being created that we later find out was fake, and yes it's scary when the government is that lender. Maybe ironically, gold now works as a store of value that hedges against government money going bad.
> But debt it still a great system that will continue to work well after COVID-19.
There is no argument for or against debt. You are inserting something not there.
It is notable, however, that to create debt there must be a creditor.
Not immediately, but the U.S. was on a gold standard at the time and funded the war through war bonds (and establishment of income taxes) which were largely purchased domestically.
The gold standard bit is important because the government was not able to simply print money to fund the war.
2) It will be far worse.
3) Initially, it will be massive job losses, massive spending, and massive regulations. There will be an apparent bump whenever the lockdowns are relaxed. The bump will likely be smaller than expected, but any bump may initiate a strong market response. Since this is an election year, there will be no stop to the handing out of money to nearly every sector of the economy. This will be followed by increases in CPI, which will further accelerate.
4) Institutional investors and then governments around the world will begin to sell their USD reserves as CPI rate of increase goes up. When they see that there is no counter-response to selling of USD reserves, the rate of liquidation will increase, yet further increasing the rate of CPI increase, though this may be a few years out. The onset of hyperinflation in Wiemar Republic Germany was preceded by a few years of high inflation, but the actual hyper-inflationary period was less than one year and set in within a month or two. This isn't to suggest that conditions in the U.S. are identical or even similar to conditions in Germany, but to demonstrate that hyperinflation onset is far more rapid than most realize.
As a side note, many people are not aware of the concept of Cantillon effects (including most of the popular Austrians and monetarists), which economists use to describe how money flows through an economy. In effect, newly created money does not instantly flow throughout the economy, and in many cases may only flow in very narrow sectors. For example, the bulk of money created over the last decade remained in non-consumer sectors and thus minimally impacted CPI. Further, even within something such as CPI, things may fall precipitously in price, such as airline tickets and gasoline, while other things experience dramatic increases, such as eggs and bread.
I observe there to be a handwavey treatment of anyone discussing inflation. I find across popular personalities, social media, and various forum comments that inflation is some relic of the past, but the only evidence provided is the lack of CPI increase in recent years, which cannot be held up as relevant given the current government activity is very different as it includes creation of money likely to flow directly into the consumer sectors while there is a forced reduction in production (i.e., yet more dollars chasing yet fewer products). Also, I'm not that great on the technical explanations, but I know that the way the QE was performed it created a very high demand for dollars, sending the USD very high. But the velocity of M2 was also very high, and that is largely what has been fueling the apparent boom, but I admit I'm a poor source for these more technical aspects.
Personally, I think things are happening too fast to gauge what investor activity is actually reacting too. There can be big movers who are still in decision-making stages and their actions have yet to be made, or they acted hastily and sold, then come back and repurchase, etc.
> COVID-19 isn't going to destroy any of our infrastructure, and if we mobilize properly, isn't going to kill nearly as many people. If our [great-]grandparents made it through WWII, there's no reason we can't make it through this.
In The U.S., WWII was funded by the savings of that generation, which is really amazing considering they had been in the longest, deepest economic depression in the nation's history prior to the start of the war.
After the war ended, cooler heads prevailed and all wartime orders were lifted and capital and labor could reform, as it saw fit, and as such, the year immediately following the war produced the greatest annualized economic gains in the history of the country.
Going into what we are doing right now, Americans don't have any savings plus many private and nearly all public institutions have a lot of debt.
There is no indication that the government will permit such a freely flowing economy even after whatever it is we are doing has ended, so I don't find direct comparisons relevant.
True, but selling implies buying...
I encourage you to take a look at your customer base and think very critically about where that money is actually coming from.
> Though things like tinned food, was what got me thinking this and whilst many may have in the past the odd tin of soup, I dare say those same people will after this, have a larger buffer of such items - for those just in case and the mentality and shopping habits will change for many for a while after this event.
It may be difficult to determine actual origin of loads at sewage treatment facilities due to shifting patterns of population activity. Previously, some percentage of people were using the commodes of their employers and other businesses, such as restaurants, at some relatively constant rate across populations, but are now almost exclusively using their homes.
The larger immediate and near-term impact of the increase in dispersed consumer inventory may be the yet further depressed spending in other sectors.
I'm not sure what an economy comprised exclusively of people buying non-perishable foods, toilet paper, bottled water, and Netfix looks like, but I fear we are about to find out.
I think one year is not out of the actively maintained zone for a mature project, but that >18-month zone is problematic. Also the number and type of issues. I was just yesterday looking at such a Schrodinger's project and wishing I had a way to determine if it was still maintained.
Depending on how the sentence is read, people may put more inventory on their hands (i.e., they use a higher quantity because they never run low, which is when people tend to conserve).
> I do not disagree.
> "I will be one of the skeptical ones in reports on deaths to COVID-19 because the government is now fully invested in maximizing the numbers to justify the incredible expense. A similar situation exists in current wars, where they claim every male killed over a certain age to be an enemy combatant because they need to justify their actions. They may likely claim that every person who dies with COVID-19 in their blood was a victim of COVID-19 (SARS2, or whatever the correct term is)."
> My wife's hospital does not have enough test for the living. They do not use a nCov test on the dead as of 03/30/2020. To suggest that they are downplaying the cause of death to "justify their actions" is misleading and downright disrespectful to the departed. The comorbidity between COVID-19 and other causes of death, such as pneumonia is widely known. To downplay this fact is ignorant.
My stated speculations of government actions have nothing to do with the departed. You are making an appeal to emotion.
The government will have to convince the public that they are being thorough, which will only work when there is some belief in understanding how many are actually dying from the thing they claim to be fighting.
Ignorance is not a factor in government activities. We can clearly see there is no case presented to support the claim that damage done to the economy is offset by the benefits of the lockdowns. This is decision-making 101: will the action performed provide a net benefit. Absent such a case, it is imperative there be an appearance of high death rates so that whenever political pressures to provide a case emerge, they can have as much supportive evidence on their side as possible.
The absence of test kits may make things worse, because if they choose to claim that everyone who had symptoms of the virus and died was killed by the virus, this can often be accepted as evidence in government policy-making as they are not held to scientific standards.
But consumer behavior will shift to keeping more inventory on-hand.
It seems as if the HN community feels very strongly that either this should not be questioned or that the only acceptable response is nobody should die from a virus, no matter the cost.
> "The likely result will be substantially reduced payments to care providers as well as significant delays in payment, which then likely causes some providers to stop accepting from these systems, thus overloading other providers who may follow and do the same."
> Fed can print money and helicopter it out.
> "Everyone needing medical care is reliant on the healthcare system receiving so much money for its services, but given that U.S. healthcare is tied to employment, a lot more people won't be able to pay their bills, so the providers will then increase rates to those who can pay, and employers will be forced to further shed employees to cover premium hikes. Even in the short term, this will reduce new investment in healthcare, such new facilities, equipment, and even equipment maintenance and repair, so the facilities will perform more poorly. Number of beds available will fall because there will be fewer beds per person."
> Nationalize the healthcare system and move to single payer.
> "There will also be increases in suicide from the increase in unemployment as well as the social isolation
> Drug overdoses rise."
> It will be interesting to track these numbers over time and compare them to the COVID-19 death toll.
The way that the term "helicopter" is used in this comment and elsewhere recently suggests people using it may not be aware of its etymology. I believe it was first used when Milton Friedman used it euphemistically to describe the best way to generate inflation to consumers. It is highly undesirable. I'm pretty sure nobody takes the threat of inflation seriously, because the real issue is how to get out of inflation. The Fed had to increase interest to 20% the last time there were issues with inflation.
Nationalizing health care and single payer are different. Nationalizing something typically refers to having it managed by the Federal Government. Single payer refers to having the National Government pay healthcare providers.
This will not affect the funding issue because the money still has to come from some place, so either it comes from increasing the number of dollars in circulation or taking it from other sectors, resulting in layoffs.
I will be one of the skeptical ones in reports on deaths to COVID-19 because the government is now fully invested in maximizing the numbers to justify the incredible expense. A similar situation exists in current wars, where they claim every male killed over a certain age to be an enemy combatant because they need to justify their actions. They may likely claim that every person who dies with COVID-19 in their blood was a victim of COVID-19 (SARS2, or whatever the correct term is).
> Care to elaborate?
The "current rate" assumes a large percentage of the economy being forced to shutdown by government order for an indefinite period. This rate is larger than everyone thinks because we are not just talking about restaurants, theaters and salons. There are all sorts of manufacturing, repair, and other businesses which are also shut down.
(Note that Americans have very little savings.)
The elderly largely rely on government welfare though Social Security, Medicare, and other programs to survive. With payrolls substantially contracted, this is going to cause a very serious burden on these systems. The likely result will be substantially reduced payments to care providers as well as significant delays in payment, which then likely causes some providers to stop accepting from these systems, thus overloading other providers who may follow and do the same.
Everyone needing medical care is reliant on the healthcare system receiving so much money for its services, but given that U.S. healthcare is tied to employment, a lot more people won't be able to pay their bills, so the providers will then increase rates to those who can pay, and employers will be forced to further shed employees to cover premium hikes. Even in the short term, this will reduce new investment in healthcare, such new facilities, equipment, and even equipment maintenance and repair, so the facilities will perform more poorly. Number of beds available will fall because there will be fewer beds per person.
There will also be increases in suicide from the increase in unemployment as well as the social isolation
Drug overdoses rise.
Property crime and violent crime nearly always increase during periods of economic decline.
People will consume less healthy foods and be in poorer health.
The government is now creating money and giving it directly to consumers. This will increase CPI and exacerbate pretty much everything.
> If this situation lasts too long, we'll all be saying hello to Great Depression v2.0.
The most troubling is that there is no analysis being performed to determine what a proportionate response is, and I tend to think most people do not understand how interconnected the economy actually is.
At this rate, the deaths from draconian government responses will far outweigh the deaths from the Corona virus across all age demographics.
I'm in a low risk category, but I put my N99 from my garage in my car and wear it while I'm out.
Face Mask Science - Literature Review https://youtu.be/_JH04M04eQQ
> Longer answer: Basic data analysis can pick up most if not all the shenanigans. Doesn't matter how much they "age" the accounts or hide their tracks, eg IP address etc. Don't even necessarily need high powered hardware or even machine learning. They do help in particular ways if you choose to use them.
> Fake vote detection is now a choice not to rather than a technical blockage.
I don't believe this is correct. Bots can create simple sentences that very much appear as a human. Spread these out across enough accounts, and filtering noise becomes very difficult.
There are also apps that activists use and I'm certain PR firms as well which alert humans to go and vote in certain ways.
These and other technologies combined with IPv6 make it exceptionally difficult for site admins and moderators to discover manipulators. Plus, many sites have few resources to put into the task anyway.
HN has at least put one step against it by not having downvotes on article submissions, though that doesn't help against upvoting manipulators.
https://www.wired.com/2007/03/hunting-down-diggs-bury-brigad...
Or maybe they are buying because their factories have been shuddered and they have capital sitting with no other place to put it. Or maybe they are buying because they are worried about inflation and are moving out into a better asset class for the condition. Or...
I realize there is some redundancy there from yours, but even "only" large investors acting (which, itself, seems an assumption) there are still far too many to claim to know their individual justifications.